Fall to Pieces
by Pixie Child
Summary: Into the unknown, just the two of them. Ouroboros timeline - Beka


**Pairing**: Beka/Trance  
**Timeline**: Ouroboros timeline (2.12)  
**Summary**: Into the unknown, just the two of them.  
**A/N**: Kind of a prequel to Figure You Out but can also be a stand alone.  
**Beta**: Nu-uh. Sorry.  
**Feedback**: is a must!  
**Disclaimer**: Not mine. I play with other people's toys.

* * *

The machine buzzed as Trance worked on the right eye. She grimaced as when woman groaned, pausing, but there was no sign of movement. Another few seconds, then the eyelid fluttered a bit.

"Don't move!" Immediately, the patient stilled. "Thank you." The pleasantry came out more as a habit and had no emotion that she used to be busting with. She continued to work, the only sound in the room coming from her medical equipment and the clanking from the Maru's engines. Beka barely seemed to breath, not moving an inch.

Afterwards, while Trance sterilized the tools the best she could, Beka continued to lie still as she adjusted to the feeling of metal where her eye should have been. Eventually, she heard a moan and the sound of a tool hitting the floor.

"Your perception will be off for a while."

"You couldn't have warned me sooner?" Beka groaned again and tentatively probed the implant. "How bad was it?" Trance kept working, pretending not to hear the question. "Well?"

"Another few millimetres and it would have it your brain. You'd be dead."

Beka gave her a dark grin. "My good-luck charm."

"Hardly. If I were lucky, we wouldn't be alone right now." She walked over to the makeshift operating table to retrieve the rest of her instruments.

"Hey." Beka grabbed the other woman's wrist, stopping her. "It's not your fault. None of it is." She said thickly.

"Yes, it is. I should have seen it. I could have prevented all of this." Going back to her work, she bent over to pick up the device Beka had knocked over.

"Where's Tyr?" The wounded woman tried to look around the room without moving too quickly.

"Dead." The words came out hollow and that was when Beka realized what she'd meant when she'd said they were alone.

"Oh." The silence hung even more evidentially now.

"I should hail the Andromeda." Trance walked quickly away.

"Okay. I'll just... stay here."

* * *

"Warning, reactor overload in five minutes." Andromeda's cool voice rose above the alarms as Beka ran down the corridor towards the command deck. As she ran, a Magog dropped down from a ladder. She pulled out her gun and shot it three times before it went down.

"Andromeda! Where the hell are the internal defences?"

"Offline."

Beka turned a corner and froze. Just outside the bridge, Rommie was fighting a hoard of Magog as they swarmed around something. "Oh god." The monsters turned towards her and she saw what they'd been covering. "Oh my god." She repeated. "Dylan?"

"Reactor overload in four minutes." Beka turned around and fired at another creature behind her. It staggered for a second, but kept coming, slashing a deep gouge in her right arm before it went down on top of her. She tried to push at the corps, but was unable to move her wounded arm.

"Go to hell!" She kicked it off and looked back at Rommie.

"Run Beka!" Fighting nausea, she sprinted back down the hall, towards the docking bay.

"Warning. Reactor overload in three minutes." Slamming her left palm against the opening hatch, Beka threw herself inside. Just as the door slid closed, she felt the engine come to life and rise off the deck. The Magog kept banging on the side of the ship even as the weapons blasted a hole through the bay doors. Beka slid to the floor and just sat there, dazed, as the ship left the Andromeda.

"Beka?" The Maru's captain looked up, having to angle her head to favour her left eye, to see Trance standing above her.

"Trance? Thank god." As she struggled to rise, the cargo ship shook when the shockwave from the Andromeda hit. She fell on her damaged arm when she lost her balance and slumped back down. As she absorbed everything that had happened, she began to sob. "Dylan..."

"I know." The purple girl stood there awkwardly while Beka cried, a train of tears streaming down from her good eye. "Come on. I need to look at that arm." Trance helped her stand and the two young women walked further into the ship as the Maru went further into space.

* * *

The Kalderans screeched and multiple weapons were fired as Beka and Trance ran into the Maru, unable to close the hatch before the freaky aliens followed them inside. They ducked down behind the closest cargo container for cover and drew their own weapons. Beka's robotic arm fired back rapidly, getting off twelve shots in just a few seconds before she ducked back down.

"Why'd we come back to this barren rock?" Beka asked Trance, having to yell above the noise of the firefight and the Kalderans' cries of outrage.

"I thought Ortiz might help. She wasn't supposed to be dead!" They both got up and fired at the aliens in rapid succession, before one managed to return fire. The bullet went right by Beka's head and hit the wall behind her; small bits of shrapnel and electric sparks flew out and hit her in the back of her head and into her left ear.

"Sonofabitch!" They ducked down again and the Captain clamped her hand over her ear, wincing. The Kalderans kept firing and just as another round was about to hit the already exposed electrical wires, Trance gave a bloodcurdling scream and pushed Beka to the ground. Unprepared, her head hit the floor, her ear taking most of the impact, and her head felt like it would explode. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Trance advancing towards the pack of Kalderans, firing like mad and yelling as though she had nothing too loose.

.

A few hours later, Beka came to on top of one of the unused bunks. Trance was standing over her and there was a horrible ringing in her ear. Before she could even open her eye, she heard the now-familiar warning. "Don't move."

Trance inserted a long, sharp needle into the ear canal, but all her patient did was lock her jaw and focus on the darkness from behind her eyelid. She didn't even make a sound an impressive task, considering that they'd run out of anaesthetic a while back. As she removed the needle, she watched Beka bite her lip. "I said, don't move." She set down the needle and picked up another salvaged medical instrument, continuing to operate, ignoring the short pained whimpers that Beka couldn't quite suppress from time to time. "Okay, I'm done. But stay down." Trance picked up the piece of bulkhead she'd been using as a tray and carried her tools away as Beka adjusted to her new implant.

"What happened?" Her voice seemed to have a metallic echo, but she chose to ignore it in favour of listening to Trance.

"One of the Kalderans shot the operations panel behind you and you were hit. Sparks got in your ear canal and damaged your inner ear. There was internal bleeding leaking into your brain from where you fell." Trance didn't bother to look back as she worked and didn't continue her explanation beyond that. Carefully, Beka pushed herself into a sitting position, groaning. Immediately, she had to brace her left hand to the side to keep from falling over, the lack of a right hand making the task that much more difficult.

"How'd we get away? They had reinforcements and we had... us."

"There weren't that many of them and you took most of them out before you went down."

"There were that many. You're lying." As Beka's balance began to stabilize, she squinted at Trance's figure and red hair. "Whoa." She raised a hand to her head and squinted again. Red hair? "Trance?" The girl didn't turn or even move to show that she'd heard her friend. "Trance? What's going on?" Finally, Trance looked back at Beka. The pilot took in the red hair, golden skin and mature features. "Trance? Is that you? What happened?" The golden woman walked over to Beka and reached out to touch her. Beka flinched and Trance stopped. Her face hardened.

"You're not the only one who's had to grow up since we lost Harper." She withdrew her hand and marched out of the room, toward the cockpit.

Slowly, lay back down and closed her eye again. "This happens way too often."

* * *

"Who the hell are these guys?" Beka jumped over the railing that divided the cockpit and threw herself into the pilot's chair. Trance was already at her station when Beka looked back, her good eye darting around as she locked her right elbow into the special steering control they'd jerry-rigged and waited for the slipdrive to start.

"Kalderans." Beka stared.

"How'd they find us out here?"

"I don't know!" Close to tears, Trance desperately hit a few keys on her consol as Beka cursed.

"Damn it! The slipdrive's down." She whipped the Maru around to face the attacking ship. "Fire."

"Firing."

Beka slipped out of the piloting brace and jumped out of her seat. "Can you handle this? If I don't get the slipdrive back online, we're going to be deader than an abandoned slave planet."

Trance's head shot up. "Beka!" The ship rocked as the Kalderans returned fire. Beka stopped. "This is it. Our chance to change things, to make them better."

"What does that mean?"

"I can't explain. Just go!" Beka ran through the ship and frowned when the shaking stopped.

"What the..." She heard the unmistakeable sound of a Kalderan shrieking and drew her gun. The scream was followed by the sound of her own voice.

"There have never been Kalderans on my ship!"

"What the hell is going on?" Beka ran towards the sound and fired on the creature, only to find herself face to face with herself. She smiled bitterly, understanding what Trance had meant.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

* * *

Trance smiled a little as she looked out at the stars, standing aboard the Andromeda. She remembered how shocked Beka had been to see her looking like she did, but it had felt so amazing to see them all again, the friends she had been unable to save alive and Beka whole.

They made a lot of mistakes. She'd made a lot of mistakes. So many mistakes, some so big they were unimaginable, but also other smaller ones that were just as damaging. Like she and Beka taking each other for granted and sometimes hating each other more than anything else.

"Hey." The pilot stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, examining Trance, clearly trying to decide if she believed her story.

"Hey." And if she needed any extra motivation to get it right this time, it was standing in front of her in the form of Beka Valentine, untouched by the last few years of hell. All she had to do was look at Beka, whole and alive, her eyes lively and inquisitive as they scanned Trance's face, the smile that crept across her face was sincere without a hint of bitterness or resentment. And this time, Trance will make sure it stays that way.


End file.
